Biodesign Challenge Summit 2019

The Biodesign Challenge is shaping a new generation of biotechnologists. We partner students with scientists, artists, and designers to envision, create, and critique the future of biotech. Join our audience of 400+ at the Museum of Modern Art and Parsons School of Design for the BDC Summit—an event that brings together finalist teams with leading voices in art, design, and biology. Over two days, finalists showcase their projects before esteemed judges from academia, the arts, and industry to compete for prizes, including the coveted Glass Microbe. Teams were chosen from over 500 students from nine countries who worked throughout the academic year to develop their visions. You’re also invited to join us on the evening of June 20th for our reception celebrating the opening of Life in Reply, a gallery exhibition of the student projects.

Ball State UniversityCalifornia College of the ArtsCalifornia Institute of the ArtsThe City College of New YorkColumbia UniversityDelft University of TechnologyEmily Carr University of Art + DesignFashion Institute of Technology Grace Church SchoolHarvard UniversityKean UniversityKeio UniversityMassachusetts College of Art and DesignMcGill UniverisityNational Research University The NestNew Design High SchoolNYU Tandon School of EngineeringNYU ITPParsons School of DesignRMIT UniversityRutgers Universidad de los AndesUniversidad del IstmoThe University of British ColumbiaUC DavisUniversity of CincinnatiMichigan UniversityUniversity of New MexicoUniversity of PennsylvaniaUniversity of SydneyUniversity of Technology, SydneyUniversity of ToledoZurich University of the Arts

BDC 2019 SpeakersPaola Antonelli joined The Museum of Modern Art in 1994 and is a Senior Curator in the Department of Architecture & Design, as well as MoMA’s founding Director of Research & Development. She has curated numerous shows at MoMA and in other international institutions, lectured worldwide, and has served on several international architecture and design juries. She has taught at the University of California, Los Angeles; the Harvard Graduate School of Design; and the MFA programs of the School of Visual Arts in New York.The recipient of a Master’s degree in Architecture from the Polytechnic of Milan in 1990, Paola Antonelli holds Honorary Doctorate degrees from the Royal College of Art and from Kingston University, London, from the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, and from Pratt Institute in New York. She earned the “Design Mind” Smithsonian Institution’s National Design Award in October 2006, and in 2007, she was named one of the 25 most incisive design visionaries by Time magazine. In 2011, she was inducted in the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame, and in 2015, she received the AIGA Medal.Natsai Audrey Chieza is a designer and change-maker working at the intersection of creative and biotechnology industries. She is Founder and Director of Faber Futures, a London-based biodesign agency that is catalysing the alignment of DNA-scale engineering with the methods and principles of critical design thinking for the circular economy. In her 2017 TED Talk, Chieza offers a glimpse into the future of a synthetic biology industry primed to transform the creation and circulation of goods and services. Her manifesto lays out how this emerging technology converges with craft and interacts with the contemporary realities of resource scarcity, climate change, and sustainable development.A background in Architectural Design and Material Futures, Chieza’s pioneering design-driven practice with bacteria pigments for sustainable textile finishing has been exhibited at prestigious institutions including at the Pompidou Centre, Vitra Design Museum and the Science Gallery Dublin, and sits in permanent collections including at the Forbes Pigment Collection at Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge MA. She is on the founding and curatorial team of Ginkgo Bioworks’ Ginkgo Creative Residency in Boston MA and has taught on biodesign programmes at Bartlett School of Architecture and Central Saint Martins in London. An influential international speaker on the confluence of design, technology and science, Chieza was an honouree of OkayAfrica’s 100 Women 2018 for her work in STEM and is named on ICON Magazine's 2019 ICON Design 100 list under High Tech and Innovation.Karen Hogan is CEO and cofounder of Biorealize, Inc. Karen earned her BS in Environmental Biology at the University of Dayton and PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from The University of Pennsylvania. Prior to her role as CEO, she taught and developed curriculum in introductory biology, microbiology, and biological design at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to her work at Biorealize and Penn, Karen served as a researcher in wetland restoration at the University of Dayton, a staff scientist in stream ecology for the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, and a research consultant for the Philadelphia Water Department and American Water Works Association.Jane Pirone is an Associate Professor of Communication Design & Technology and Dean of the School of Design Strategies at Parsons School of Design. Her research focuses on methods of interdisciplinary and collaborative practice through projects that leverage the creative and critical use of new technologies, design, media, strategy and entrepreneurial approaches, while prioritizing advocacy, activism, and social and environmental justice.Jane has been the founding member of the Datamyne Project (MYNE), the Urban Research Toolkit (URT) and the urbanBIKE initiative. She served as Director of the Communication Design program from 2006 - 2011. Jane was the founder/creative director of Not For Tourists, drummergirl.com, and the award winning design firm, Happy Mazza Media, working with clients such as Nickelodeon, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, IBM, and the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center.Antonio Regalado is the senior editor for biomedicine for MIT Technology Review, where he writes about how technology is changing medicine and biomedical research. Before joining MIT Technology Review in July 2011, Antonio lived in São Paulo, Brazil, where he wrote about science, technology, and politics in Latin America for Science and other publications. From 2000 to 2007, he was the science reporter at the Wall Street Journal. Antonio graduated from Yale University and holds a master’s degree in journalism. He lives in Boston with his family.Sarah Richardson is a cofounder of MicroByre, a company that is changing the bioengineering landscape by converting stubborn non-model species into genetically tractable strains within which the techniques from model organisms can be practiced. A computational and molecular biologist, Dr. Richardson specializes in the design of genomes. Dr. Richardson earned her B.S. in Biology at the University of Maryland College Park; with the support of a prestigious DOE Computational Science Graduate Fellowship she earned a Ph.D. in Human Genetics and Molecular Biology from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. As a Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow of Genomics at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory she worked on massive scale synthetic biology projects and the integration of computational genomics with experimental genomics. In 2015, she was named a SynBio LEAP Fellow, based on her “leadership potential and vision for shaping a future in biotechnology.” In 2015 she was also one of five promising young female scientists to receive a postdoctoral fellowship award from L’Oréal USA; she proposed to study CRISPR systems and the domestication of non-model bacteria.